


sifting through the pages of the pictures that you drew

by peraltiaghoe



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Art School, F/M, Tutoring, i don't know what's going on here, this is a handful of ideas that have melded together into this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-08
Packaged: 2021-03-11 23:00:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29125341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peraltiaghoe/pseuds/peraltiaghoe
Summary: a peraltiago art student au that literally nobody asked for ¨̮Jake's an art student, Amy's an art history student, could I make it anymore obvious?work title from Man Overboard's Septemberism
Relationships: Jake Peralta & Amy Santiago, Jake Peralta/Amy Santiago
Comments: 31
Kudos: 65





	1. it's been a while since you felt right

**Author's Note:**

> chapter title from Daylily by Movements

Jake Peralta has everything he needs. 

He has paper of all different assortments. Sizes, mediums, thicknesses—you name it. He has rolls of paper, pads of paper, and looseleaf paper erratically stacked here and there. There’s some of that shiny, metallic type paper that he has no idea what to do with, colored paper, patterned paper, and a never ending supply of white paper. Hell, he even has _tissue paper_. Like, for paper mache, which he hasn’t done since he was in approximately the fourth grade. _But, ya’know, you never know, right?_ His ever-proud art teacher mother had cheerily exclaimed as she unloaded the materials from her trunk last fall.

He has a vast array of materials. From paints—acrylic, oil, watercolor, in tubes, in jugs, in spray cans, in buckets, on palettes—to pencils, pens, charcoal, markers, pastels. Anything you can use to make art, Jake has it. From the cheap stuff he’d picked up at his local craft supply stores, to the mostly-used oil pastels he’d been hanging onto since he was thirteen, to the higher quality stuff he’d acquired through the odd birthday gift or holiday sale, his collection of art materials is two things: extensive and disorganized. 

He has a studio apartment—emphasis on the _studio_. Jake’s “apartment” is approximately the size of his childhood bedroom. His childhood bedroom, for reference, was _not_ large. In one corner, his full size bed sits, unmade at all times. His makeshift bedside table is actually a mini-refrigerator, home at all times to a six-pack of whatever cheap beer the bodega owner around the corner donated to Jake when he noticed he _looks like he hasn’t been sleeping_ (He _hasn’t_ been sleeping—a side-effect which Jake swears simply comes with being a twenty something art student in New York, but which his bartending job is doing absolutely nothing to remedy.) and several indistinct, probably inedible boxes of takeout (which he will cram to the back and shove to the side to make room for another box of takeout until it gets bad enough that he actually contemplates throwing away the entire refrigerator before, begrudgingly, cleaning it out). 

The rest of his apartment, which costs more money than he’s ever physically seen, is filled to the brim with his art supplies. He has one large desk, donated to him by his mother when her classroom got a renovation, splattered here and there with paint (and maybe the odd orange soda stain). His clothes and any stray non-art-related belongings are all crammed in his closet so as to not take up any more of the art studio than they have to. Jake’s apartment is just that—an art studio. It just so happens that he can’t afford an art studio _and_ a place to live (and living in his mother’s house in his early twenties just doesn’t fit the tortured artist vibe he’s so clearly going for), so he’s simply living in his art studio. 

And as awful as it is for a living space… it’s one hell of an art studio. It’s a second floor apartment. One wall is made entirely of glass, large windows spanning floor to ceiling providing him with the _best_ natural light. The angle gives him a perfect view of the sunset on one side (not that he’s ever intentionally awake early enough to see it) and an even better view of the sunset (which he’s typically working through, but he catches every now and then). The window overlooks a little park. _And such great scenery!_ His mother had proclaimed upon her first visit. _Great for a young, inspired artist._

Jake, of course, agreed. He imagined all of the masterpieces he would create in this space, all the hours spent hunched over whatever project he’s pouring his soul into at the moment. He pictured long nights spent running on nothing but creativity and caffeine, midnight diner breaks with friends that left him feeling even more excited about whatever he’s working on. This is the _perfect_ background for a young artist like himself. 

Yes, Jake Peralta has _everything_ he needs. 

Everything, that is, except inspiration. 

“Fuck you,” he mutters under his breath, rolling his eyes at the tired reflection staring back at him from the mirror behind his desk. He swears his reflection smirks back at him, though he’s never felt less like smiling. He’s on hour—how has it been _three_ fucking hours?—of staring at a blank canvas. 

His semester is half over. His friends and classmates have been excitedly chattering about their final projects—all in various states of almost finished. 

Jake’s final project stares back at him, as far from finished as can possibly be. Never in his life would he have described a blank canvas as anything but blank, but this one… this canvas is different. It’s practically sneering at him, growing more furious at its neglect with each minute that it remains untouched. He and the canvas are _both_ growing angrier, and he’s only barely avoided stabbing a hole in it again like Rosa had once suggested he try when he’s stuck. _It always works for me,_ she’d muttered with a shrug. It _hadn’t_ worked for him, and then he was just even more mad because he had to go buy another stupid canvas. 

Perhaps he _isn’t_ an artist, he finally resolves. What young artist, residing in what he would call the greatest city in the world, doesn’t have a _single_ worthwhile idea? If he can’t come up with a good idea _here_ , how is he ever going to succeed _anywhere?_

Inspiration is _everywhere_. He’s sure of this. And yet, even so, he can’t tap into _any of it._

He sighs aggressively, swirling around in his chair and knocking over a lopsided stack of paper. He stares up at his ceiling, contemplating just dropping out so he never has to think of this project again, when he finally gets a bit of a grip on himself. 

This is a normal part of being an artist. It doesn’t make him feel any better when he repeats this thought to himself—and repeats it, and repeats it—but he knows it’s true. Everyone goes through dry spells. Yes, this is longer without solid inspiration than Jake has _ever_ gone, but perhaps he just isn’t used to digging for inspiration anymore. 

There was a time, he knows, when ideas hadn’t come so easily to him. He’s been spoiled the last few years, an ever-changing life providing him with constant material to work from. The past few months, he’s been stagnant. He’s been working the same job, seeing the same people, listening to the same music, even. 

There _is_ a way out of this. 

He twists in his chair frantically, reaching for a pad of paper and the first pencil that he sees. 

He isn’t going to come up with any award winning ideas with this, but getting _something_ out of his brain is better than nothing. He just needs to make _something_. 

He looks out the window, eyes scanning the landscape that he’d barely so much as glanced at the past few weeks. He scoffs to himself. It really is gorgeous out there. He’d never really been much of a landscape guy, but it’s undeniably beautiful. All of this is sitting right outside his window, and he’s just been staring at a blank canvas for three hours (or, more truthfully, for three _weeks)._

He quickly remembers why looking out this window hasn’t always served him well in the way of art ideas. The landscape is buzzing with activity. Jake’s eyes can’t stay focused on one thing for too long, his attention caught and drawn to something new each time he thinks he’s found something worthwhile. There’s a dog with a frisbee that he thinks would be fun to sketch, a group of friends all leaning on each other in different ways on a picnic blanket. There’s a kid on his dad’s shoulders that brings a stupid grin to Jake’s face, followed immediately by a dull ache that has him searching for something else to grasp his attention. An old man offers his ice cream cone to his crying grandchild, whose own ice cream cone sits cone-up on the sidewalk. There are ducks in the pond, a kite in the sky, a food truck with a winding line, a pair of young women strumming little ukuleles. 

None of this is _speaking to him._ His attention is tugged elsewhere. There’s so much going on, _so much happening._ There has to be something. There _has to be._

His eyebrows scrunch together. 

Just outside of his window, a short distance away, there’s a bench. His pencil starts moving on the paper before he’s even had a chance to think it through. 

Curled into the corner of the bench, one leg tucked comfortably underneath her, is a woman. 

She looks to be about his age. She’s alone. Amidst all of the craziness happening around her, she’s alone, and even more unusual—she’s _reading_. She seems to be completely oblivious to the world around her, her attention tucked safely into the book on her lap. She looks completely normal, albeit having chosen a strange place to quietly read. Jake knows from experience that if he cranked open his window panel, the bustling sound from the park would waft into his windows and the only inspiration he’d have would be to go downstairs and find something more exciting to do. And he’s doing art—which he _loves_. He couldn’t imagine _reading_ in the middle of all that activity. 

She looks so _normal_. He isn’t sure what it is about her. She’s wearing shorts and a faded NYU crewneck. The wind blows and ruffles her dark hair. She carefully sets the book face down in her lap for a moment, running her fingers through her hair. She tucks it behind her ear, then shifts her hair to hang over one shoulder. She looks around for a moment, not seeming overly invested in anything in particular. Then, as if she’d determined that no one was interested in occupying the other half of the bench, she stretches her legs out in front of her. 

Jake finds himself grinning, his eyes flickering between her and his paper, pencil moving furiously as he works to capture the scene she’s set out for him. He isn’t sure what about her is capturing all of his attention—she’s definitely pretty, but he’d seen quite a few attractive people before his eyes caught sight of her, and none of them even had his pencil _twitching_. 

But this girl—Book Girl—is a completely different story. Within minutes, he has a completed sketch. His first completed sketch in _weeks._

Not only that, but he has a _good_ completed sketch. He’s been creatively braindead for at least a month, having to wring lame ideas out of the depths of his brain for other assignments. He hasn’t been drawing or painting for fun like he usually does. It all just seems like such a chore lately. 

And yet here he is, holding a completed sketch in his hands. His eyes trail over the harsh lines of the bench, the soft curve that forms her calf hanging down off the edge of the bench, her elbow propped up on her knee. 

This is it. He’s done it. He’s found inspiration! Outside his window, he’s found _something_. He completed this sketch, and it’s renewed his energy. He can _do this._

He wheels his chair back over to his desk, sure that the empty canvas won’t be quite so daunting now. 

He isn’t aware that another two hours have passed until he turns his head and sees the bright pink tugging at the orange of the sunset. His canvas is still, unsurprisingly, blank. 

He sighs to himself, grabbing his sketch pad and rolling back over to the window. His eyes are immediately drawn to the bench he’d found her on earlier, but his expression falls when he finds it empty. He scans the other benches in the area, hoping that he’d just looked to the wrong bench, but alas—she’s not sitting on any of them. 

He glances around the park, invested in a weird little Where's Waldo for some brunette girl in an NYU top amongst a sea of college-aged people, many of whom are sporting NYU tops. After a few minutes, he sighs to himself. Book Girl is gone, and nobody else is catching his attention. He stares down at his sketch, his pencil hesitantly tracing along the bare edge of the paper. 

He should sketch some more. 

He stares at her face, traces over the curve of the hair rolling over her shoulder with the tip of his pencil. He leans back in his chair, blowing a dramatic puff of air from his lips, then tosses the sketch on top of his desk, ignoring the adamant voice in his head telling him he needs to at least _start_ this project. 

His mind is tangled up in Book Girl, so he isn’t going to be of any use artistically. 

Why did that sketch just flow right out of him? When he hasn’t been able to draw a fucking _doodle_ that he likes lately, how did he draw _her?_

He lets himself drop onto his bed gracelessly. He glares up at the ceiling for a moment, then tugs at his comforter untils he can roll himself into it, burying his face in his pillow. He’s going to take a nap before his shift at work. It’s not going to make that much of a difference if he waits one more day to start his project. 

Four more days, however… 

_That_ might make a difference.

He’s busy, he defends. _That’s_ why he hasn’t started the project. It has nothing to do with the fact that he’s tried on twelve different occasions over the past four days and hasn’t been able to come up with anything even remotely useful. It has nothing to do with how burnt out and frustrated he feels over the whole ordeal. It’s just because he hasn’t had the time. 

He hasn’t thought about Book Girl much, save for the few times his sketch had caught his eye. Once he attempted to jog his creativity by using the sketch as a reference for other sketches. He thought if he combined the sketch and his memory, perhaps he could get a second sketch. Yeah, it wouldn’t be anything for the project, but it could be a second positive creative experience, or, at the very least, something to work his muscle memory before he completely forgets how to hold a pencil or a paintbrush. Besides, there was always the chance that it could help him to think of something he _can_ use for the project. 

But even that didn’t work. He couldn’t get a second sketch that didn’t have him rolling his eyes at his inability to just _get it right._ He shoved the first sketch under some book that he’s never read, balling up the new one and tossing it into the pile of other useless sketches (which, he hadn’t failed to notice, was getting larger and larger). 

And then he’s just been _working._ Between work, classes, and attempting to be a functional twenty-three year old and not some kind of shut-in, he didn’t really have a lot of free time. To be completely honest, the project hadn’t even really been on his mind much the past few days. Unless he was actively failing at working on it, it just wasn’t at the top of his mind. 

Why think about it and just frustrate himself more, anyway? 

So he’d shoved it to the very back of his mind. Which, ya’know, was just working beautifully for him. No frustration, no cares, nothing. Except that, ya’know, he’s going to fail this class if he doesn’t have a project by the end of the semester. And when he thinks about that, he thinks about how he doesn’t know what he’s doing at this university, or with his life for that matter, and everything starts to feel a little bleaker than he prefers. 

So! He simply doesn’t think about it. 

Until, on the fourth day, he looks up from the drink he’s pouring at work and sees a familiar face.

She’s sitting at a booth alone, her laptop in front of her, with an open book resting partially on her thigh, partially on the edge of the table. He falters, distracted by seeing her—this woman he’d never seen _anywhere_ before the other day, least of all the place where he arguably spends most of his time. 

“Hey man, what’re you doing?” 

Jake shakes his head, snapping back to reality and looking at the giant puddle he’d overpoured all over the counter. 

“I’m sorry. I, uh—” He shakes his head, uncomfortable under the eyes of this customer and fully aware that he’s causing a scene. He has no interest in bringing any extra attention to himself. “I’ll remake this.” 

The man raises an eyebrow, but seems to accept the solution. Jake’s dedicating as much concentration as he possibly can to not looking away from the drink he’s making, because he knows the second he looks up, he’s going to be looking at her. 

_What is it about her?_

He isn’t sure, but the second he finishes the drink and deposits it in the customer’s hands, his eyes are on her again. He’s wiping down the counter without looking, a skill he’s perfected from doing so upwards of two thousand times, but his fingers are twitching with a desire to draw. 

And it just makes no fucking sense. 

_Why?_ He hasn’t wanted to draw _at all_ in the past four days. Why, when she’s in his line of sight, is everything different? 

But it’s like he’s hit with this _need_ to draw something. It’s like when he gets a good idea and he has to run off to write it down before he forgets, except now he’s itching to just sketch the whole thing out. He doesn’t want to list ideas, he wants to draw her, and he _doesn’t know why._

Looking at her up close, she’s definitely his type. Cute, dark hair, and, by the looks of it, way smarter than anyone who would give him the time of day. But he’d had his fair share of girlfriends, a handful of dates and one night stands, and he’s _never_ drawn a girl before. It’s not like he wants to draw her because he finds her attractive. 

Perhaps it’s because—objectively speaking—she’s weird. Or interesting, rather. He’s interested in why exactly she’s at the bar he works at, seemingly invested in… studying? She’s drinking a coke, sans the whiskey, and picking at a plate of french fries, but mostly she’s studying. She’s alone, and the lighting is so dim and (not that he knows from experience, but he _thinks)_ inadequate for reading. It’s loud just like the park, and the general ambiance of the place really doesn’t scream _study here_. 

But she is. 

Before he can stop himself, he’s reaching for a napkin. The bar napkins are really no match for his typical sketch paper, and the blue ball point ink pen he’d had tucked into his back pocket is no charcoal pencil, but he’ll work with what he has. 

Within minutes, he has a pretty solid sketch, as far as napkin sketches go. Her chin is propped up delicately on her hand, her bottom lip pulled between her teeth as she focuses on whatever she’s reading. Her hair is tucked up into a loose bun, stray waves sticking out here and there. There’s a slight tension in her eyebrows that he thinks he’s captured perfectly. She pulls one leg up so it’s perpendicular to the table, then shifts so that she’s resting her chin on her knee instead of her hand which, honestly, is even cuter. He’s smiling to himself as he sketches out the block letters of the NYU sweater she’d worn the other day, as he can no longer see the front of her current sweater. 

He sets the napkin down behind the bar when a server passes an order ticket to him. A chocolate milkshake. He’s running through the motions of making the shake for one of their regulars, which is how he completely misses Gina sidling up behind the counter. 

When he finishes the milkshake and sets it down on the edge of the counter, he notices her there. There’s a weird sort of spark in her eye that makes his stomach twist. He knows her well enough to know that this means bad news for him. 

“What’re you—”

“Table twenty-seven’s milkshake?” 

“What? Table twenty-seven, no, that’s—”

“Complete with a complementary napkin portrait?” 

_“Gina!”_ Jake hisses, but by the time he reaches for her, she’s already scurrying off with both the milkshake _and_ the napkin. His options are to follow her and risk inevitably standing in front of Book Girl and having to take credit for the weird drawing, or to make himself scarce and hope that Gina doesn’t leave her his phone number or something equally embarrassing. 

He’s left mumbling under his breath and sprinting into the kitchen, avoiding the eyes of the milkshake-less regular. Jake watches from the order window, straining to hear. 

“Hello!” Gina chirps, sliding the milkshake toward Book Girl. “One chocolate milkshake.” 

Book Girl looks up at her. “Oh. Uh… I didn’t order a milkshake.” 

“Weird.” Gina turns back toward the kitchen, making direct eye contact with Jake, who ducks down to avoid being seen. “It had your table number on it. Oh well. It’s on the house, I guess.”

Book Girl raises an eyebrow. “Are you sure?” 

“Yeah. I can’t give it to anyone else now that it’s been on your table, so you might as well have it.” She moves to step away, then looks down at the ground. “Oh! You dropped something.” 

Gina bends down as if she were picking something up, then stands up straight, outstretching her hand toward Book Girl with the napkin in it. 

Book Girl’s eyebrows furrow as she takes it. “This isn’t…” She trails off as she inspects it. “This isn’t mine.” 

“Oh.” Gina sounds bored, but he knows she’s thriving on this. “It looks like you.” 

“No, it’s definitely me. But it’s not mine.” 

“Oh… So somebody here… _drew you?”_

“It’s, like, really good,” Book Girl murmurs distractedly. For just a second, a little swell of pride overshadows the panic emanating from him. 

Gina shrugs. “I mean, yeah, it’s fine.” Jake rolls his eyes like Gina can see the gesture. “Weird, though.” 

Book Girl looks back up at Gina. “I wonder who did it.” She looks around for a moment, scanning the people throughout the bar. 

“Could be anyone,” Gina replies. “A customer. An employee.” 

Book Girl scoffs. “An employee wouldn’t draw this while working. It looks like it took time. They’d be busy. Ya’know, doing their jobs.” 

Gina stares at Book Girl as if she has three heads. “Yeah, you’re right, the full staff made up entirely of college students in their early twenties is _so_ invested in their careers at The Bullpen.”

Book Girl doesn’t quite seem to see the joke that Gina’s making, which would make Jake smile if he wasn’t still on the verge of panicking at Book Girl _holding his sketch of her_. 

“It’s really good, though,” Book Girl repeats. 

“Maybe you have a secret admirer,” Gina offers. Book Girl quirks an eyebrow as if this isn’t a feasible explanation. “Anyways, enjoy your shake.” 

And with that, she’s walking back behind the bar, a smirk on her face. 

_“What_ is wrong with you?!” Jake hisses the second the kitchen doors swing open. 

“What?” Gina mutters, bumping his shoulder as she walks past him. 

“Why did you do that? !”

She makes a face at him. “Drop a milkshake off to a table?” 

“Give her the—” He stops short, shaking his head and quieting down. “The picture.” 

“Oh.” She laughs. “Because it’s funny.” 

“God, you’re the worst—”

“Peralta?” Another server calls from outside the window. “Where’s the chocolate milkshake for my table?” 

Jake sighs, rolling his eyes at the smirk Gina’s aiming down at her phone. “Coming right up.” 

He walks back out of the kitchen. He’s not sure if he pushed the doors open too aggressively or what, but the second he steps back behind the bar, Book Girl’s eyes are on him. He freezes for a moment, locking eyes with her. There’s something calculating in her stare, and he can’t look away. 

_Can she tell? Does she know? How could she possibly know?_

And then she smiles at him. 

Jake Peralta, for what it’s worth, is pretty good with women. He’s cute (he’s been told) and he’s funny (he’s taken advantage of every chance to prove) and he’s charismatic and just… the exact opposite of what he is in this moment. 

Right now, he’s a deer in headlights. He’s staring at her, his mouth falling open like a fish out of water, and it’s almost like he can see it all happening from a different vantage point. There are alarms sounding in his head, and yet he can’t force himself to do something normal. He can’t even think of anything normal to do. 

_“Jake!”_ His attention snaps back over to the other server. “My shake?”

“Right, sorry,” he mutters softly, averting his eyes as he walks over to the shake machine. 

_What is wrong with him?_

She doesn’t look back up at him the rest of the night—which he knows because from that moment on, he practically hasn’t looked away from her. 

A while later, some guy he recognizes from one of his classes slides into the booth across from her. Jake’s watching intently, the apprehension in her face fading as the man sticks his hand out toward her. It’s a little louder in the bar now than it had been when Gina had brought the napkin sketch to Book Girl, so he doesn’t quite catch her name when she says it, but he hears the man introduce himself. Teddy Wells. 

None of this seems out of the ordinary. Book Girl is pretty, and she’s alone at a bar, and of course that boring guy from his impressionism class is the kind of guy who slips over to women’s tables uninvited. She smiles politely, as he often sees women do when men greet them without invitation. Perhaps he’ll offer to buy her a drink. He wonders if she’ll take it. 

Yes, this is a scene that’s been laid out for him hundreds of times from his vantage point behind this counter. 

It’s what happens next that takes him by surprise.

“Uh, I’m sorry, I just noticed…” Teddy gestures down to the napkin. Book Girl raises her eyebrows. “I’m sorry if this is weird, but I…” 

He scratches the back of his neck, looking sort of guilty. 

“Wait… You drew this?” 

Jake’s eyebrows are furrowed similarly to hers. 

“I’m an art student,” he replies easily. “I was just—you know, when inspiration strikes…” He shrugs. “Sorry if it’s weird or if it made you uncomfortable. I just wanted to—” 

“This drawing is _amazing,”_ she interrupts. 

Jake is dumbfounded. 

Book Girl is smiling this brilliant smile, gushing to some guy about _his_ drawing. And the guy is _taking credit for it._

He watches around his menial tasks as they start to make conversation between themselves. He’s completely bewildered when, after a few minutes, Teddy takes the napkin sketch, flips it over, and writes what Jake can only assume is his phone number on the back of it. 

Teddy grins at her, and she smiles back. He waves to her as he rejoins his friends, who’re already preparing to leave. 

Jake is now faced with a problem.

Does he come forward and tell Book Girl the truth about the sketch? 

Does he weirdly take credit for it? Will that make him look like a liar, or will she believe him that Teddy was lying? Would Gina vouch for him or would she find the situation hilarious and watch as he crashed and burned? Is it really any of his business either way? Does he _want_ credit for the weird picture he drew of her? Although she _did_ really seem to like it when she was talking to Teddy… 

He heads to the kitchen to get another container of lemon slices, and when he returns, she’s gone. 

Guess that solves that problem. 

But he thinks about it all night. All through his closing shift and on his walk home, as he peels off his work shirt and drops into his bed, all the way until his eyes are shut—she’s on his mind. 

When he wakes up the next morning, the only thing on his mind is _food_. Did he forget to eat the night before? How is he _this_ hungry? 

Food completely slips his mind when he walks past his window. 

Because right there, on the same bench he’d seen her on the other day, is Book Girl. 

She’s curled up reading a book again, at this god-forsaken early ass hour. What college student goes out to read at the park at 11am? 

He knows there’s a box of cereal and a bottle of orange soda with his name on it, but he’s eyeing his sketchbook over on his desk. 

This is getting ridiculous. 

He’s not going to sketch her right now. It’s getting weird. 

He scoffs to himself, turning around and resolving to eat breakfast before he does anything art related. 

Unfortunately, the second he turns around, he comes face-to-face with the mountain of crumpled, discarded sketches. His eyebrows furrow, and he’s gritting his teeth, and he _shouldn’t sketch her right now._

But _fuck_ , he’s tired of watching that pile grow. She’s the only thing he’s been able to get right the past few weeks, and inspiration is few and far between lately. He should take advantage of moments like these when they arise. 

That’s what he tells himself as he settles in to start his third sketch of Book Girl. 

And when his third sketch comes out absolutely perfect, he starts his fourth. And then his fifth. And then after that, he’s pissed. 

Because why the fuck is it so easy to sketch her? 

He’s an artist. Like, not to get all cocky, but he’s a _good_ artist. Accomplished even, for a twenty-something college student who frequently rolls out of bed in the mid-afternoon and occasionally sleeps through his classes. He’s capable of making great things. 

So why can’t he? 

Maybe he’s somehow turned into a portrait person. Maybe he’s lost his ability to make anything but portraits. 

He flips to a new page in his sketchbook, swiveling his chair so that Book Girl is no longer in his line of sight. If he can draw her, he can draw anyone. Right? 

_Wrong._

He’s added somewhere between ten and twenty sketches of other people to trash mountain when he finally gives in and lets his eyes wander to her. She’s still on her bench, but her book is closed now. 

Her eyes are closed. He has no idea what she’s doing, but people are walking all around her, and she’s leaned back with her eyes closed, this blissful smile on her face, book abandoned in her lap like she was never reading in the first place. It brings a goofy smile to his face, and he can’t help but to sketch this out. 

And right there in the middle of this sketch, the idea comes to him. 

God, this idea hits him like a train, and before he can even register what’s happening, he’s tearing her pictures out of his sketchbook and arranging them on his desk. 

He has an idea for his project. 

Suddenly, it’s like he was never hungry at all. He’s rummaging around his apartment like a madman, searching for any blank canvas he can find. He finds several of different shapes and sizes, and arranges them all across the desk, placing and switching the sketches on top of the canvases and staring. 

This is it. 

This is _it_. 

He spends the next hour moving things around, planning, taking notes, sketching out drafts of his idea. 

He’s finally fucking got it. 

Jake Peralta has everything he needs. 

Materials, a studio, and _inspiration_. 

He glances back out the window with a smile on his face. The smile slowly fades away as his eyes settle back on Book Girl. 

Yes, Jake Peralta has everything he needs. 

He watches as Teddy Wells says something that makes Book Girl laugh, and that weird feeling from the night before is back in the pit of his stomach. 

Everything he needs, and one thing he doesn’t.


	2. holy anxious

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> wait, Book Girl has a name?! 
> 
> :0 
> 
> unbeta'd as per us'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter title from Super Whatevr's holy anxious. 
> 
> _oh my you're a masterpiece that I_   
> _can't help but looking and I am_   
> _never mistaken, not a doubt_  
>  _oh love, i keep on searching for ya_  
>  _can't help but looking and i am_   
> _you are the one thing i adore_
> 
> _holy spirit_   
>  _holy anxious_

Jake is starting to almost feel like himself. 

It feels like a weight has been lifted off of him now that he’s finally got something for his final project. It’s not finished by any means—hell, it’s barely _started_ , but it’s something, and something is more than he could have hoped for two weeks ago. 

Almost all of his free time has been dedicated to art again. 

The only minor problem… 

Is that Book Girl is still the only thing he can make art _about_. 

She’s his muse, and he’s not quite sure how to feel about it. 

It’s weird. He knows it’s weird, and that makes him feel even weirder about it. 

He’s doing his best—trying his absolute hardest—not to notice her. 

The problem is that it’s impossible. 

He sees her everywhere, this nameless girl that he just happened to see outside of his window one day. His eyes stray over to her bench every time he passes his window, and she’s there with a book in hand way more consistently than anyone else he sees out there. 

It’s bad enough that he has direct access to her outside his window at least once a day, but then she starts showing up more around the bar, too. He’s going to work up the courage to speak to her one day, he _swears_ , but right now he’s resolved to stealing glances and cataloguing the tiniest details about her to his mind with each brief glimpse. 

He feels this weird shame around the whole situation. He shouldn’t be watching this stranger without her permission, shouldn’t be committing moments in her life to paper without so much as her awareness. He’s tried to stop over the past two weeks, but inevitably, he sees her. Out the window, across the bar, on campus on the way to his intro art history course. He sees her, and he notices, and he _remembers_ , and even when she’s not outside the window (or even more rarely, when he can resist the temptation to _check)_ , he still finds himself drawn to his sketchbook, his drawings without her reference getting better and better with each begrudging attempt. 

All he can do is keep trying. 

Keep trying to draw something that isn’t Book Girl, keep trying to resist the urge to draw her at least half the time that the urge comes, and keep trying to work on his project. 

Working on his project is yet another problem. He had been under the impression that while she was the center of the _idea_ , the final product could simply be based on her, not an actual image of her. So far, every attempt at sketching out a draft that doesn’t consist of Book Girl has ended up topping Trash Mountain. 

He’s glad to be back in an artistic mindset, but the whole Book Girl fiasco is on his mind all the time. When he’s not watching her clutch a book she’d just finished to her chest with a smile on her face outside his window or tapping the end of her pen on her bottom lip while she thinks at her usual booth, he’s thinking about things just like that. 

He’s accepted that he’s sort of enamored with her. 

Normally when he’s interested in someone, he has no problem making some sort of move. He’s always been fairly smooth when it comes to things like that, but this situation is just so complicated. There’s the added layer of the art thing that makes him feel, just, so uncomfortable. He’s certain that if he were getting to know someone and he found out that they had a stockpile of pictures they’d drawn of him in their bedroom, he’d be scared off—and rightfully so. 

It’s not like that, and he knows it’s not like that, but it’s also _not_ not like that… Like he _does_ have a series of sketches of her on his desk, and he’d have more if he hadn’t been vigilantly refusing to draw her out of principle. 

Then the _other_ complication, one that somehow bothers him even more than the one that’s on his mind all the time, is Teddy Wells. 

Teddy Wells and his big fat lie got Jake a front row seat to seeing him cozying up to Book Girl in any way he possibly could. Over the past two weeks, Teddy’s become a much more regular part of Jake’s life, like it or not. 

Jake is the only one who knows that Teddy lied to her about the napkin sketch. He also knows that, based on how frequently he sees them together now, they’re beginning to get a little closer. 

This, in and of itself, is a complication. 

But it’s not like he should really care, because he doesn’t even know the girl. But whether he wants to or not, he cares. 

He wants even less to do with this complication than the others, but it faces him way more than he’d prefer. He has a class with stupid Teddy, and he’s making more frequent appearances outside his window, and a handful of times, he’s been seated across from Book Girl at the bar. Those were _delightful_ shifts to work. 

It’s not jealousy, he’s certain. There’s a certain level of guilt, he thinks. She wouldn’t be getting to know him if Jake hadn’t sketched her on that napkin. It’s his fault that she’s presumably going to date this creep. 

Perhaps Teddy is a nice enough guy. He doesn’t really know him. But he knows that he walked over and lied straight to her face, and the whole basis of whatever relationship may or may not follow is built on a foundation of that lie. 

And Jake is the only person who knows that the lie even happened. 

_And_ Jake is no better, because if he walked over to her and started a conversation, he’d _also_ be lying to her. Not like he would introduce himself and say _hi, I’m Jake, and I know it sounds unlikely based on my next sentence, but I’m _not_ a serial killer—would you like to see the several drawings of you I made?_

Of course he wouldn’t say that, because he’s not an idiot, but he _is_ a big weirdo who has ten sketches of a girl he’s never spoken to, and the more he thinks about it, the creepier and weirder he feels about it all, and he just _wishes_ he could figure out a different idea for his project.

But it took him so long to come up with this one, and he _likes it_ and he’s _excited about it_ , and he still hasn’t been able to make anything that isn’t centered around Book Girl, so if he abandons this idea simply because he feels weird about it, he’s back at square one. 

On the bright side, he doesn’t know her. He never has to speak to her, and she never has to know, and he can turn in this project and never think about it, or her, again. 

He’s stuck in his head again. 

He’d called his friends and begged them to grab lunch with him so he could get _out_ of his head, and get away from his problems, and from art, and from Book Girl. The walk to the restaurant Charles chose is uncharacteristically quiet, which gives Jake time to get tangled in his unwanted thoughts. 

“What’s your deal?” Rosa mutters. Her elbow bumps into his ribs unforgivingly, and he winces and scrunches his eyebrows at her. “You still worried about your project?” 

He can’t help the stupid smile that creeps up on his lips. _He’s excited about it._ “Uh, no, actually.” 

“No?” 

“No?” Charles repeats, sprinting a few steps ahead so he can walk backwards and look at Jake. “Did you come up with something?” 

Jake shrugs, his smile small and private. “Maybe.” 

“Can’t even try to play it cool, huh?” Gina mutters, eyes trained on her phone. She looks knowingly at him, and he just rolls his eyes. They all know how much he’s been struggling with art lately, and she saw the napkin sketch. She knows exactly what prompted this turnaround. 

“I want to know _everything!”_ Charles screeches. Rosa makes a face at him, and Charles looks at her apologetically, lowering his voice. “I want to know everything!”

“I’m not sure that I’m ready to talk about it yet.” He looks down at the ground, grateful that their destination is finally in sight. “Ya’know, I don’t want to jinx it or anything.” 

“Oh, of course!” Charles agrees immediately. “But we’re all so excited to hear about it when you’re ready!”

“Yeah,” Rosa scoffs. “I’m shaking with anticipation.” 

“I would sell the rights to Linetti Set Go for just a glimpse at your project,” Gina adds. 

“I would willingly give you my address for a sneak peek,” Rosa continues, voice monotone.

Jake rolls his eyes. “We get it, nobody cares about my project.” 

“I care!” Charles argues. 

“I know, buddy.” Jake flashes a genuine smile at Charles, and then they’re filing into the restaurant. 

He doesn’t really look around much. It’s a little diner not far from campus, one that Charles had been talking up for the past two years, but that they’d just never gone to. He glances at the _seat yourself_ sign, then follows Rosa as she chooses their seat. 

“Would you look at that?” Gina whispers next to him. She tugs on his sleeve, and he glances up and over at her as he slides into the booth. When she doesn’t look back at him, he follows her line of sight. 

Jake had asked to go to this lunch to get his mind off of things. 

Instead, he’s staring at the one thing he can’t get off his mind. 

“Table twenty-seven,” Gina clarifies quietly.

 _Book Girl._

She works here. She’s a server, and he can’t escape her no matter where he goes. 

To make matters worse, he sees another familiar face in a corner booth. Teddy Wells. He’s got a few friends with him, some guys Jake doesn’t recognize. 

This is what he gets for trying to run away from his problems. They plant themselves right in front of him, and he can’t take a single step without getting tripped up in their vines. 

“Do you know her?” Rosa asks, looking in that direction when Jake doesn’t look away. 

“What?” Jake shakes his head, abruptly looking at the table and flipping frantically through a menu. “No.”

Gina scoffs. “That’s not true. She—”

“Comes to the bar sometimes,” Jake cuts in, hoping his severe eye contact is enough to shut Gina up. “Just recognized her.” 

“Yeah right,” Gina shoots back with an eye roll. “He has a crush on her.” 

“She’s cute,” Charles interjects. “Definitely your type.” 

“She’s not my—” Jake stammers, laughing uncomfortably. “I don’t—she isn’t—”

“Amy’s pretty cool.” 

Jake’s head snaps up at Rosa, and if anybody else says anything, he’s too focused on this new information to hear it. “Amy?” 

Rosa’s eyebrows furrow. “Yeah? Amy Santiago.” 

Jake quiets immediately, his eyes flickering back over to Book Girl. 

_Amy Santiago._

She’s balancing a tray on her shoulder, twisting around the edge of the booth expertly. It looks mindless, much like his time behind the counter at the bar. Her ponytail is swinging behind her with each step, and he idly wonders how she looks cute even in a stupid red polo with some unidentifiable stain on the front. He could draw her right now. He wants to—but he won’t. 

There’s this weird churning in his stomach. He’s filled with a new sense of apprehension. 

Book Girl has a name. 

Which—of course she has a name. Obviously. He was aware that she had a name. 

But _knowing that name_ means his project is no longer about Book Girl, some stranger he saw and will never really interact with. It’s about Amy Santiago, a real person that one of his best friends knows by name. 

“Why are you even looking at the menu?” Gina flips one of the pages, thumping him in the head with it where he’s looking so intently straight through the menu—not reading it at all. “We all know you’re going to get chicken fingers.” 

He ignores Gina, mindlessly flipping through the pages of the menu and hoping with everything in him that any other server in the building is taking care of their table. 

He lets out a visible sigh of relief when some blonde girl comes to take their order instead, and he thinks he does an okay job of pretending he isn’t watching everything that’s happening on the other side of the restaurant.

It’s a pretty small place, so it doesn’t take much effort to see (and hear, if he strains) everything that’s happening. 

He hasn’t gotten any further away from his problems. If anything, he’s been catapulted right into the center of them. He wants to pretend she isn’t over there, but he just _can’t_. 

He knows she’s there, and it’s quieter here than at the bar, so he can hear her voice better, and she’s moving around more here than she has in any other place he’s seen her, and suddenly he’s wishing he just never left his apartment in the first place. 

She lets out this stupidly cute laugh at Teddy’s stupidly weird attempt at flirting. Jake doesn’t think he’s heard the word _pilsners_ that many times _ever_ , especially not in some little diner at 2pm. _She gets it, you’re twenty-one._

He’s been mostly quiet since they walked in. _Brooding_ , Rosa says. He shrugs her off, trying to pawn his silence off on the fact that he’s _starving._

He’s a third of the way finished with his chicken fingers when his attention is drawn to the other side of the restaurant for a different reason. 

Some guy at Teddy’s table has been talking loudly about Book Girl _—Amy._

He hasn’t just made one comment. He’s continuously talking about her, seemingly heckling Teddy about her, who’s just laughing and shrugging at most of the things he’s saying. 

Jake’s been rolling his eyes the whole time. He grew up surrounded by strong women, and that guy with his stupid Delta-Zeta-Douchebag (or whatever the fuck those symbols stand for) t-shirt clearly hasn’t ever respected a single woman in his life. 

It’s annoying, and he hates the guy, and he hates Teddy even more for entertaining his friend’s stupidity, for likely agreeing with him and sharing his opinions, even if he’s less loud about it. 

But it’s one thing when the guy’s making comments behind her back. Sure, everyone in the seating area can hear him, but Amy’s in the back, so she’s shielded from his stupidity. 

It’s another thing entirely when she comes back out to check on them, and the comments not only continue, but get worse. 

“How are we doing over—”

“Where’d you meet this one anyway, Wells?” The man sneers at Amy, and her eyebrows draw together. Her eyes flicker over at Teddy unsurely, then back at the man speaking. “You slid in her DMs?” 

“Uh… I’ll just grab some refills…” She trails off, turning away from the table. 

_“Damn,”_ the man barks out behind her. “You slid in that booty yet? She’s fuckin’ hot.” 

She stops abruptly, seemingly frozen in place. Jake isn’t the only one at his table looking over there now. All his friends are staring with varying disgusted expressions. 

Amy turns on her heel. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t use language like that in our restaurant.”

“I’d appreciate it if you came by the Delt house later.” He shoots back with a wink. “I know this restaurant isn’t a buffet, but you could be.” 

Her jaw drops. She looks at Teddy again. He’s clearly uncomfortable, but he’s quiet, his hand disappearing to scratch the back of his neck. His friends are all roaring with laughter. He doesn’t say a word to his friend. 

“I’ll just get the check.” Amy says bluntly. 

The man bites his lip. “Don’t worry, I’ll be sure to give you the tip. Seems like you could use it.” 

She stops in her tracks on her way to get the check. Jake can see her face, can see her eyebrows furrowed, her face pink with some combination of anger and embarrassment. Yet again, Teddy doesn’t say anything. 

“If you haven’t hit that, I totally will,” the guy continues. “Shit, even if you _have_ hit that, I probably will.” 

“Hey,” Jake finally shouts. He can’t fucking take it anymore. They all turn to look at him, including Amy. “Shut the fuck up, man.” 

The guy laughs. “Who the fuck are you?” 

“Who the fuck are _you?”_ Gina yells back before Jake even has an opportunity to speak. 

His eyes flick away from Jake and onto Gina, then over to Rosa. The tension in his eyebrows dissipates, a stupid smirk coming across his features. 

“The Vulture. ‘Cause I’ll swoop right in and steal your girl.”

Rosa scoffs. “Vultures pick at dead meat that other predators leave behind. Not exactly something to be proud of.” 

He shrugs. “Dead meat’s still meat.”

Everyone, even Teddy, makes a face at that. 

“You’re just an asshole,” Jake continues. “It’s embarrassing.” 

“You know what’s embarrassing? That big, white ass of yours.” He scoffs, shoving out of the booth. “Your girl’s not even worth it, Teddy. Later, ding dongs.” 

“Amy,” Teddy tries when she slaps their bill onto the table, but she rolls her eyes and walks to the back. Teddy’s table erupts into loud _oooooh_ s.

She doesn’t come back out until the blonde server cashes out the table and Teddy and his remaining friends are all gone. 

She comes back out to bus her table, paying no mind to any of them. 

And for some reason, Jake just can’t help himself. 

“Hey—excuse me?” 

She looks up at him, her eyes softening slightly when she makes eye contact. She sets the plates back on the table and makes her way over to them. 

“Yes?”

“Can I order a chocolate milkshake?” 

She smiles that perfect customer service smile. “Of course. I’ll tell Kylie—”

“Actually, could you bring it?” 

Her eyebrows raise. “I mean, I’m not your server, but I guess…”

“Thanks.” 

“Yeah…” 

She walks away, leaving her stack of dishes on Teddy’s table. 

“Hey, uh, we have somewhere to be, right?” Charles asks, eyebrows raising way too high for it to look casual.

Jake rolls his eyes. “You guys.” 

“No, he’s right,” Rosa agrees. “Gina was gonna show us that pop-up shop on Atlantic.”

“Yeah, I’d invite you, but I still haven’t forgiven you for stretching out my dress last weekend because you ‘thought you could pull it off better than me.’” She scoffs. “I don’t care about the dress, but what a ridiculous thing to say.” 

“C’mon, you guys don’t have to leave.”

“Well how exactly are you two gonna fall in love with all of us sitting at this little table?” Charles tries. 

“Boyle, c’mon.”

“You know how pop-up shops are.” Gina shrugs. “One second they’re here, the next they’re gone. We gotta check it out while we can.” 

“I’ll venmo you.” Rosa announces as she stands up.

Jake rolls his eyes, waving his friends off. He’s not sure what the worst part of all this is, but the awkward half-setup with their server feels like it’s pretty high on the list even before factoring in the sketch thing. 

Amy pops back out around the corner a moment later, eyebrows furrowing at the now-empty table. He waves, grinning stupidly at her. 

“My friends abandoned me.” 

She laughs. “Is that something they just do?” 

“Honestly? More often than you’d think.” 

She slides the milkshake onto the table. “Yeah, I know Rosa, and that actually doesn’t surprise me that much at all.” They both laugh. “But on the bright side, this milkshake’s on the house.” She shrugs. “You know, to thank you for saying something back there.” 

Jake frowns. “Well that’s awkward.” 

Amy stammers. “That’s… awkward?” 

“Yeah.” When she raises an eyebrow, he continues. “Because I don’t want a milkshake.” 

The range of emotions that flicker across her face is both impressive and adorable. She finally settles on confused, if not a little annoyed. “You asked for a milkshake.” 

“Yeah, uhm…” He shrugs, looking down at the milkshake, then back up at her. “For you.” 

“For me?” 

“Yeah. You just, ya’know, seemed like you were having a bad day. And that guy was a dick. And I just thought maybe you could use a milkshake.” 

Her eyes narrow for a moment, as if she’s studying him for a single ounce of insincerity. She looks around the empty restaurant, then shrugs. A small smile stretches across her lips, and then just like that, she’s sliding into the booth across from him. 

“You work at the Bullpen, right?” 

It doesn’t escape him that he’s making small talk at a table over a milkshake with the infamous Book Girl. For what it’s worth, he thinks he’s playing it pretty cool. He shrugs a shoulder, doing his best to pretend he doesn’t see the blonde server peeking at them from the kitchen. 

“Yeah, I bartend.” 

“How do you like it?” 

Jake laughs. “Why, you looking for a job?” 

Her lips tug up at the corner. “I don’t know, maybe. Is it any better than this?” She gestures back at Teddy’s table. 

“Honestly, the douchey frat guys are usually a lot less sober at Bullpen, so…”

“Worse.” She sighs. “Probably good that they have you behind the bar instead of a woman, huh?” 

“Okay, hurtful.” He laughs when she raises her eyebrows. “Frat guys _love me._ Didn’t you see that back there? Couldn’t keep his eyes off me.” 

Amy laughs. Her following smile is so genuine and ridiculously pretty. She rolls her eyes, then takes a sip of her shake. “Thank you.” Her eyes get a little more serious. “Really—I didn’t catch your name.”

“Jake.” 

“Jake.” She smiles. “You didn’t have to say anything. That was cool of you.” 

Jake shrugs. “He was being an ass. They all were.” Another little shrug. “Don’t worry about it.” 

She stares at him for a long moment, then smiles. She stretches her arm out across the table, offering her hand for him to shake.

“Amy Santiago.” 

Jake smiles, accepting her hand. “Amy Santiago.” He gestures to himself after they release one another’s hands. “Peralta, by the way.” 

It’s like a little light goes off in her head. “Jake Peralta!”

Jake presses his lips together. “That would be me.” 

“You’re in the Monday/Wednesday section of Jacoby’s Intro to Art History class, aren’t you?” 

Jake’s eyebrows scrunch up. “Yeah. Are you in that class?” 

She nods. It’s an auditorium with approximately a million people, and he’s gotta be honest that he doesn’t have the _best_ attendance to that class. There’s no way he would have ever known that they shared the class. 

“I was assisting the TA temporarily at the beginning of the semester,” she informs him. “I recognize your name from the roster.” 

“Temporarily assisting the TA, huh?” He grins. “So she’s a nerd?” 

“I mean, I prefer academically inclined, but…” She shrugs, then takes another sip of her milkshake, grinning at his laughter. “It was extra credit!”

He had been hopeful that talking to her would take away some of this attraction he feels toward her, but it’s having the opposite effect. 

“Shit, maybe I should help the TA, then. That class is—”

“Amazing?” She interrupts. 

Jake makes a face. “I was gonna say awful, but close enough, I guess.” 

“What?! You think it’s awful? It’s so interesting.” 

Jake’s lips press into a line as he shakes his head. “I mean, the _stuff_ is interesting, but it’s just so… boring.” 

“That’s an oxymoron.” 

“Okay, mean. After I defended you?” 

Her eyebrows shoot halfway up her forehead. “No, I wasn’t calling _you_ a—”

“I’m just messing with you, Amy.” 

She furrows her eyebrows at him and resolves to take another drink of her shake. 

“It’s not that the information is boring, they just teach it in such a boring way. I was doing so bad last semester that I dropped the class. I just can’t pay attention.”

“Maybe you just need to look at it in a different way.” 

He scoffs. “Yeah, maybe. Or maybe I’m gonna finish the rest of my degree but I’ll still be in Intro to Art History when I’m 35.” 

She laughs quietly. She looks at him, then looks down at her milkshake. “I mean... I could help you, if you wanted.” 

“What?” 

She shrugs. “You gave me this milkshake, so I haven’t really had the opportunity to thank you. I could help you in art history. If you were interested.” 

“Like… a tutor?”

She shrugs again. “If you want.” There’s a beat of silence, and Amy starts backpedaling before he has the opportunity to collect his thoughts. “But, ya’know, I do a lot of my studying at the Bullpen, and you work there…” 

She’s shrugged so many times that he thinks it might be a bit of a nervous tic. She does it again. 

“Maybe I could just sit up at the bar with you and when you’re not super busy, we could work on art history stuff?”

And he shouldn’t. 

He knows he shouldn’t. 

But his eyes flicker over her face, and he’s made up his mind before he’s even really thought about it. 

“That would be really cool, actually.”

“Yeah?” She grins at him. “Cool.” 

“Cool, cool, cool,” he replies stupidly, but it earns him another cute smile, and _god this is a bad idea_. 

“Great.” She slides back out of the booth. “Does Tuesday night work? Are you working then?” 

“Yes—yep, I’ll be there.” 

“Cool. I’ll see you then.” 

He hasn’t had an overwhelming urge to draw her the entire time he’s been talking to her. Just before she walks away, she reaches up and tucks the non-existent stray hairs behind her ears on both sides. Her ponytail is absolutely perfect, smooth and not missing a single strand. The movement is so reflexive that it immediately catches his attention. She smiles, seemingly sort of embarrassed. It reminds him of when he occasionally adjusts his glasses on his face when he’s not wearing them. 

The desire to draw her hits him like a freight train. 

“Do you want me to have Kylie grab your check so you can catch up with your friends?” 

“Huh?” He shakes his head. “Oh, yeah, that’d be great.” 

She smiles as she picks up her milkshake. “Great. Have a good rest of your weekend.” 

She promptly turns to walk back toward the kitchen. 

“Hey, uh—Amy?” She turns back to look at him, an eyebrow quirked. “See you Tuesday.” 

A soft grin stretches across her lips. “Bye, Jake.” 

He watches as she disappears into the kitchen, and he can see through the order window when Kylie practically attacks her as she steps through the doors. He can’t hear what they’re saying, but Kylie’s excitedly talking, and Amy can’t stop smiling—and neither can he. 

Kylie has her eyebrows raised knowingly when she comes to the table with his check. “Did you enjoy everything?” 

Something about her tone makes him think she isn’t referring to the food. 

“Yeah. Everything was great! Thank you.” 

She takes his card as he holds it out to her. She smiles at him, murmuring something about being right back, then sprinting back into the kitchen. She’s back to excitedly talking to Amy, and Amy glances at him through the order window, then quickly turns to hush Kylie when she sees him looking. 

They disappear from view behind the order window. He smiles down at the table. A few minutes later, Kylie reappears. 

“Thanks!” Jake says happily as she sets down his card, his receipt, and a pen. 

“Thanks for coming in!” She replies. 

She leans just a little closer for a moment, her voice quieting a little, eyes flickering toward the window. Jake follows her gaze and finds Amy pretending she isn’t watching. 

“I hope to see you again,” she adds. 

Jake smiles softly. “Yeah, I hope you will, too.” 

“Bye, Jake.” 

“Bye.” 

For a third time, he watches Kylie excitedly chattering to Amy in the kitchen. This time, he waits until Amy looks up at him, then waves. She smiles, clearly embarrassed, and shakes her head as she waves back. 

For half a second, he contemplates doodling her on his receipt. 

Instead, he writes down the tip, scrawls out a quick milkshake doodle, and writes _c u tuesday, ames._

He hurries home. 

There’s a soft smile on his mind that he really wants to sketch out. 

But Book Girl has a name. 

God, it’s so weird. He can’t, like, draw her, can he? He can’t use her for his project without her permission. Not now that he’s talked to her, right?

What if they become _friends?_

Could he ask her if he could draw her? 

Is that weird? 

Is it weirder to do it without asking? 

It’s weird either way, he decides. 

He isn’t going to draw her, but he _is_ going to paint. He hasn’t painted in a while, and maybe all of his troubles are because he’s just been sticking to one medium. Maybe if he leaves sketching behind for a few days, he can go back to the basics and paint something simple, and that’s the solution to his ongoing problem. His final project requires him to paint, anyway.

He sets up a few random objects from around the room for a sort of still-life. After his fourth attempt at painting it, he gets frustrated, reaching up and shoving the basketball out of the middle of his setup.

He’s frustrated, and he’s stressed, and he’s anxious, and this weird guilty feeling is tugging at him in a way that he simply can’t ignore. 

He cracks open a beer, and when that doesn’t help him to master the art of completing non-Amy-related art _or_ to simply chill the fuck out, he opens another one. 

He’s four beers in when he decides that maybe he’ll just play around with some paint, and that’ll make him feel better. 

He turns on some music. He wants to have a clear mind, to just paint whatever comes to him. He’s feeling good—relaxed, and tipsy, and comfortable. 

It feels like almost no time has passed, but when he looks up at the clock, it’s been another three hours. It’s almost as if he wasn’t thinking about his motions, just dipping his brush into colors, cleaning it off, and stroking a new color across his paper with no real plan.

He shakes his head when he sees the time, switches off his music, and sets down his paintbrush. 

He drops against his bed, not bothering to wash any of the dried paint off of his hands first. He wants to nap off some of the alcohol before he meets up with his friends again in a few hours to, of course, drink some more. It’s _Saturday_. 

He wakes up a few hours later to a series of texts from Gina, claiming that she’ll never speak to him again if he isn’t at Shaw’s in twenty minutes. He groans quietly, rubbing his eyes as he stands up. 

It’s pretty dark outside, and he’s groggy, so he’s having a bit of trouble piecing together the last hour or so before he fell asleep. His eyes flick over to the basketball on the floor, to the half-crumbled still-life attempts on the top of Trash Mountain, and then finally to his desk. 

His eyebrows furrow. 

He takes a few steps closer, inspecting the painting he’d left there, paintbrush still resting, uncleaned, on the paper. 

It’s Amy. 

He painted Amy Santiago. 

He decided he wasn’t going to draw her, thought perhaps playing with some paint would help him figure out his direction with art, and then he _drunkenly painted her_.

It’s not his best work—apparently alcohol doesn’t really aid artistic ability—but it’s pretty good. He knows he could do a better job sober, but for having been less than sober and for having not touched paint in a while—it’s _good_. 

His direction, apparently, is Amy. He doesn’t _want_ to do his project on Amy. It’s like he’s stuck in the middle of the forest, and his compass only points to Amy when he wants to go literally _anywhere_ else. 

There has to be some sort of another solution. 

Maybe he can continue his project as if it’s about her, and in a few weeks when it gets to the final portion, he can switch her face out for a different one. Or perhaps he won’t make a face at all! He can cover it up with something else.

Although that would require him being able to paint something else… which he hasn’t demonstrated having the ability to do lately… 

_God,_ this is so fucked up. Why can’t he just make art like normal? Why does everything have to be so weird and complicated? 

He pulls his phone out when it buzzes in his pocket.

 **Gina:** wake up or i’m telling your mom about what really happened to that vase she made in 11th grade 

He rolls his eyes. 

**Jake:** are u gonna threaten me w that until i die

 **Gina:** i can come up w a better threat if you want 

**Gina:** if you aren’t here in 10 minutes i’m inviting table 27 

Yeah, that’s exactly what he needs. Things aren’t already weird enough surrounding this girl that he just met, he needs to intricately weave her into another part of his life. 

**Jake:** i’m on my way stop 

He pulls his jacket on, staring down at the painting as he zips it up. 

**Gina:** 10 minutes pineapples

He scoffs to himself, making his way out the door without any more hesitation. 

He really needs to get a grip on all this. 

He started this day looking for a way to get a little more distance between him and Book Girl. Instead, he learned her name, spoke to her, _scheduled a study date with her_ , and then fucking painted her. 

He’s not sure he could get farther from his goals if he tried. 

But he’ll just keep trying.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you @ autocorrect for changing "he slid into the booth" to "he slid into the booty" and thus creating the vulture's lines ¨̮

**Author's Note:**

> i slept one and a half hours last night should i be posting this rn? probably not but here we are weeee sorry


End file.
